Yes, here’s another post on spirits, so much more interesting than Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?

Legend has it that in the mid nineteenth century, a sixteen year old boy bought a still from a lay minister who’d been pressured by his congregation to divest himself of the evil enterprise. That boy was Jack Daniels, a young man of Welsh, Scottish, English, and Scots-Irish descent.

A couple of years ago on a drive from St. Louis to Huntsville, we saw a road sign advertising the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Naturally, we made a U-turn and headed there.

The distillery tour starts at the spring, the source of the water that gives this whiskey its distinctive taste.

author’s photo

Another important ingredient is the sugar maple charcoal used in the filtering process. Wood is burned on site to make the charcoal.

The tour include a view of the great wooden vats (no pictures allowed) where the distilling process takes place, and one of the many barrel rooms where the spirits sit for aging.

There’s a healthy bit of irony at the tour’s end. Unlike, say an Anheuser-Busch tour, there’s no sampling the product at the end. The distillery is located in a dry county.

It’s a wonderful bit of Americana. If you’re making a trek to the Grand Old Opry, put Lynchburg on your list of places to see.